We rightfully jump on people who say happiness is a choice. This is because often what they mean is watering down the definition of happiness to accommodate being able to produce it on cue. Maybe to slow burn contentment. But what I think they are getting at is the idea that happiness is a learned response which I highly agree with. It’s Pavlovian. You are given a life script that you are prompted to follow by the prevailing myths of the culture along with social pressure. For example the idea that an SO can make you happy. I was never happier than when I was with the girl I liked. That relationship ended but it taught me about happiness. Modern psychology tells us that happiness is up to us, but I think it’s something we fall into when we are doing what we believe society wants us to do.

The flip side of this is when things go wrong in relationships we suffer doubly because now we have lost our proxy of happiness and our culture is expecting us to perform a certain rhythm of happiness that involves another willing partner. But we can’t find that partner or that feeling any more. So we take a hard look at our life script and say maybe we should decouple happiness from being in a relationship, but it’s so ingrained in us most of us have to learn the hard way by going through a messy divorce.

Redpill is basically the main gateway to the Alt Right. Men disaffected by the dating scene join online communities where they vent about their woes with modern women. The mainstream media dismisses them but I wouldn’t be so quick to. A lot of what they say is true:

Status is the most important thing. In fact if you google that phrase you immediately get a result from the Redpill subreddit. The “you do you” Diet Coke ads have a women as a pitch person for a reason. Because women are punished less for expressing them self in unique ways. Men on the other hand know it’s all about money, power, and status (even in our physical appearance less variation is tolerated). For men it’s a double whammy because we lose the ability to have guy friends as well as girl friends when we’re low status (I’d ask my closest friend from college if this were true but he wouldn’t write back because I’m too low status).

Individual virtue is the most important thing. It’s strange that you would have to go to what is branded a hate group to find this. Admittedly these disaffected men are saying it is women’s virtue that is the most important thing while ignoring their own lack of it. Liberal tropes about humans being able to be educated into good just don’t work in modern society (if they ever did).

Marriage is a raw deal for men with money. This is because women get the money whether they stay or go. This gives them no incentive to stay when things aren’t going well. Women won’t marry men who make a lot less money than them because they wise up when the shoe is on the other foot.

Modern psychology offers men very little. Most men don’t want to sit in a room drinking bad coffee talking about their feelings. Even a lot of the issues they have can’t be helped by therapy. If your depression is connected to you being a total loser, paying someone you can’t afford to tell you you aren’t isn’t going to work. A lot of the thinking patterns that under gird depression such as black and white thinking are logical responses to what is happening around them. You either get the job or you don’t, the girl calls back or she doesn’t, the project gets uptake or it doesn’t. This can be most clearly in the bull shit advice women give men, like “believe in yourself” and the like. This is because it works for them, because women have value in and of them selves where men’s value comes only to their connection to potential or actual wealth (haha modern psychology would disagree with me but I’m right and as long as the left denies this they are going to lose men to the Alt Right).

Christianity is like a health insurance risk pool. In a health insurance risk pool the healthy people have to join to balance out the sick people so the premiums don’t skyrocket. In Christianity the people on top (who have the least incentive to be virtuous) have to be as virtuous as the people on the bottom or the system collapses (as it is doing now before our eyes). It’s harder to be virtuous when you are on top because you have power and it becomes completely optional and is even detrimental in your quest for more power and control.

Christianity romanticizes things where the weak defer to the strong like forgiving, waiting and serving. But the strong are supposed to be doing these things as well. If they don’t the system breaks down. Especially because those at the top set the tone for those further down. People imitate successful people.

the wave is what society says is important
the undertow is what really is important
when you’re on top
you’re moved by the wave
when you’re on the bottom
you’re sucked by the undertow

There are a lot of things that whether they are true or not depends on your place in society. Some things:

Being virtuous generally gets you good things if you are on top but just keeps you treading water if you are on the bottom (or worse). This is because virtue is optional for those on top so when they exhibit it they are rewarded. Further down virtue is expected so the lack is punished. Still further down virtue is seen as weakness and punished. On the bottom you generally are in derelict subcultures that revolve around vices and substance abuse. The groups that don’t involve these things are generally higher up and not accepting of those on the bottom.

If you are on top you are treated as if you have innate worth but the further down you go the more your treatment is tied to how and whether you function in society. This is because in both cases you are being treated based on how you are valued, it’s just on top people don’t like to believe they are being treated well just on the account of what they have to offer so they made up the “innate worth” trope. When you are on the bottom all artifice disappears and people really shine their true colors in your face. You only really feel the weight of importance of looks, money, and status when you do not possess them. Because when you don’t people go into “reduced functionality mode” around you, polite but curt (at best), or all the gloves come off and they insult and demean you because you have no power to fight back.

Positivity is generally a luxury for those on top. The self-esteem movement is for those on and near the top because they are the ones who invented it so naturally it would only apply to them. People on and near the top are controlled more by a “soft touch” because they already have most of their lives together. People further down often need to be controlled more tightly and for this to happen negativity enters in. There is even a survey somewhere that said how poor kids heard at least twice as much negativity as rich ones.

Trust in the power of your prayers. This means if you are praying for someone you have to treat them as if that prayer was already answered. Otherwise you aren’t praying in faith. For example, if you were praying for someone to get a job you would have to treat them as if they already had one.

Things said about people on the margins are unfalsifiable. For example if you say God is near people on the margins. People who do not experience this will be silenced and ignored because they have no voice. Conversely if you make a claim about the most powerful people that is false, they will immediately shut it down and will be listened to.

If you call/tweet your representatives about something they already agree with, you are telling them: We have your back. You don’t have to worry that doing the right thing will cost you the election. Doing the right thing will get you votes, and make you *more* likely to win. That gives them more options.

While there can be little doubt that the practice of mindfulness can lead to significant health benefits, its current prominence in corporate culture is nested within a social, cultural and political context where stress is now seen as a failure of the individual to adapt to the productivity demands of the corporation. In other words, if you’re stressed out, you’re not working hard enough on your personal focus strategy. You’re letting the team down.

People don’t fight for justice as an abstract concept—at least not for very long. What they do fight for is people. They’ll fight harder for those people with whom they can more easily empathize, and they’ll fight hardest for those people about whom they care most. If white people are going to make a robust and lasting commitment to racial justice work, then intimate inter-racial friendships must accompany and sustain that commitment.

Christians are so turned off by people with disabilities because they display God’s inaction in action. They are kryptonite for prayer, their conditions often worsen instead of better with time. Christians are not allowed to resent God for his inaction directly so they do so vicariously through individuals with disabilities. That’s why people with disabilities often get treated worse in church than other places.

Social networks and hacking also “have enabled us to see, in full color, into the innermost workings of every institution and into the attitudes of those who run them,” noted Seidman, “and that has eroded trust in virtually every institution, and the authority of many leaders, because people don’t like what they see.”